


And Hazard All We Have

by thegildedmagpie



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gondolin, Incest, Lack of Communication, M/M, Uncle-Nephew Relationship, Uncle/Nephew Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 15:08:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5338622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegildedmagpie/pseuds/thegildedmagpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moments in a doomed city, but moments of a particular sort.  Mostly shippy angst and angsty shipping featuring a not-so-common incest pairing.  </p><p>Grief, rank, and circumstance leave Turgon and Maeglin both lonely in the beautiful city of fountains - and both with limited options for healthy human contact.  Besides, they can both tell themselves they're good for each other, if they don't think it through too hard.</p><p>This stuff ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter Index

**Author's Note:**

> So I have a fairly consistent 'verse for Gondolin which mostly follows canon, and in which Turgon has his own OC bit on the side and Maeglin is busy with Idril and Tuor, and everyone very politely pretends that no one else knows about each other's activities.
> 
> I also, however, somehow wound up sailing the Good Ship Turgon/Maeglin, so this is that stuff.
> 
> The title is from a quote by Dorothy L. Sayers.
> 
> Character appearance headcanons: I write Maeglin as dark-skinned, because I wanted to de-white-ify the canon a bit and because I wanted to make it very hard to ignore the colonialist implications of his story. I write Turgon as golden-haired, because Ted Nasmith painted him that way one time.

**Oh, look. The first chapter is an index. How original.**

**Chapter 2.** "Gives Naught but Itself, and Takes." Turgon is very good at communicating in theory, and very bad at it in practice. Maeglin is a close sleeper.


	2. Gives Naught But Itself, and Takes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Or, "Polemic Against Possessiveness." Turgon is good at communicating in his head, but not so good outside it. Miscommunication ensues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally written for @psychopompious on Tumblr, who requested Turgon/Maeglin + "things you said too quietly." The title comes from Khalil Gibran.

-

Maeglin sleeps like a climbing vine, curling close and hot around his bedmate, his hands often finding less-than-decorous positions as he seeks nearness and warmth with an unconscious desperation. Turgon awakens with a vague sense of dread from dreams of ice, but he's instantly brought home by the warmth and calm of not being alone in his bed tonight. For Maeglin's arm has insinuated itself around his waist, Maeglin's raven hair (which smells softly of iron and lavender) is falling across his face, Maeglin's knee is crooked to press their thighs together, and Turgon lies still for a moment, relishing the contact with something in between animal pleasure and quiet kinship. He feels his heartbeat slow until their pulses beat in time.

They've been arguing lately. Nothing explosive, nothing that causes anyone to storm out or slam a door or refuse the other's bed – but enough that there have been a few strained silences, a few raw evenings of carefully avoiding certain topics. It began with an invitation to an event being held by one of Gondolin's noble households; the host has not made much secret of undressing Maeglin with his eyes, and even if it were not so, an invitation to his well-kept garden is an obvious bid for the favor of the city's young prince. Turgon does not want Maeglin to go, but wonders if he should; Maeglin thinks he shouldn't, actually, and doesn't want to in any case. Somehow rehearsing these facts turned into subtly sharpened words and a slightly bitter conclusion, and things have been some tense.

Turgon is coping with this by bringing more of his work away from his study, carrying it in his head when he makes himself leave the papers on his desk. Maeglin applies the same instinct to his anvil, turning up in the evening later and later, and sootier besides. Turgon combs the ash out of his nephew's beautiful hair with no comment and asks him to game after game of chess in hopes of unlocking both of their hidden tension. Maeglin has been trying to be seductive the past few days, and despite his curious beauty, he's so unskilled at it that this is always a rather pitiful sight; to the point that Turgon's never told him he can detect the increasing desperation of his initiating touches, hoping with decreasing hope that he'll be able to train Maeglin out of attempting to win sex as an alternative to difficult conversations.

A few days ago, Maeglin turned at bay (in what Turgon thought was a fairly inane conversation) and hissed: “Do you love me for myself or because you think you should? Do you want me or not?”

There was no possible answer to that question, so Turgon did something he's now profoundly ashamed of, and he kissed Maeglin to quiet him. He knows he needs to break that habit – but when Maeglin is castigating himself or asking questions with no good answer at all, when he's trying to hurt himself on the broken edges of Turgon's possible responses, to hush him like a child and kiss him like a god is the first instinct Turgon can reach for.

The following night, he asked Maeglin to let him try something new. Maeglin at once went nervous and retiring, and how Turgon ached to see the battle between learned fear and the _want_ to trust him fought once again in Maeglin's heart.

He drew Maeglin down on top of him, and Maeglin's thighs parted as he went to arrange himself straddling his uncle, the hammered firmness of his lithe body going easily pliant. “Not quite, dearest,” Turgon said gently, and drew Maeglin down for a kiss. “I'd like you to take me tonight.”

Maeglin's eyes flew wide as Turgon placed the jar of salve they always used for the purpose in his hands. “I don't want to hurt you,” he said, his voice going a little breathy in the subtle turn of tone that indicated panic.

“Do I hurt you?” Turgon challenged him.

Maeglin shook his head mutely, clutching the jar.

“Then you will not hurt me. We are not made so differently.” In truth, he's hardly been taken, and his experimentation with Elenwë always left his back aching a little – but he will not reveal this quirk of his body to Maeglin. In this he must be a teacher first. “Let me show you what I like.”

Maeglin's fingers, dark and quick and strong, were not smooth, but they were clever inside him, and he found them pleasant. The movements of lovemaking were some less so, and Turgon rode out the first few powerful thrusts with gritted teeth before cautioning Maeglin to gentleness – and then the movements grew so soft he could hardly feel anything. He had to spend ten minutes inching an increasingly frustrated Maeglin toward the right level of force. 

But oh, it had been worth it, and if it left him aching, it left him quivering too. He clung to Maeglin's shoulders half-surprised at the unfailing steadiness of the strength that bore them both up. In some ways, he had come to think of himself as Maeglin's guardian even more now that he had succumbed to their raw mutual desire and rendered himself unworthy of the title.

And yet the next night it was back to careful politeness, and Turgon could very easily have adopted any of his nephew's coping mechanisms. Hammering something flat, say, or stalking the halls in a lethal-looking strop that sent lesser lords scrambling unnoticed for cover. Something to express what feels like the sheer pointlessness of trying to teach him to see himself as the prince and craftsman that he was: worthy of love, worthy of his position, worthy of so much _better_ than a doomed love affair with his bloody _uncle._

Through it all they still spent most of their nights together. They are in the habit, now, with Maeglin using his own bed only for napping between armor repairs. Besides, they both like to sleep warm. And Maeglin has nightmares. So they lie like this every night, and Maeglin laminates himself against Turgon's side as soon as they've both fallen asleep. 

Turgon looks long at Maeglin. His neck is vulnerable, raven hair freshly cut and whispering just below his jawline to bare the side of his throat as it falls over Turgon's paler shoulder. His skin looks marble-cool in the dim, filtered moonlight; but for the heat at every point of contact he might be a sculpture of a sleeping youth in Irmo's garden. The scars Turgon knows to cross his back, even those he can feel under his palm, are invisible now. Proud cheekbones; arched, decisive brows so like Aredhel's were; a firm nose and a sloping jaw – each strong feature conspires with the others to cast half Maeglin's face into concealing shadow. Turgon feels certain, utterly and abruptly, that he could spend his life tracing them here in the secret, intimate dark. 

“I want you,” he whispers, unable to hold back now. “I want you, Maeglin. I want you for my own. I want you to be mine and no other's. I love you because I love you, not because you love me. I want you with my body and my heart, and I am so terribly afraid of the fact that you are becoming everything to me.” His hand skates over the surface of Maeglin's brief river of dark hair. His voice drops even further as he confesses his shame to the high silence of the tower cloaked in night. “How can I say that I wish you had not been your father's before, as I once was jealous of my wife's childhood companions for being first her friends? That I look at you and I understand how someone could pursue something beautiful to the ends of Arda? That I want you, dearest, for _my own_?” 

He speaks softly, so softly, and Maeglin does not stir. 

_-_

In the morning, Turgon tells himself that his selfish madness has passed. 

In the morning, Turgon informs Maeglin that he's thought it over some more, and he believes Maeglin ought to accept that invitation after all. 


End file.
